It is often convenient to utilize a hand-held rotary-type grater to grate cheese and other such food products, particularly when a large volume of grated cheese is required. Such systems typically include a grating barrel that the user manually rotates with respect to the grater housing and which includes a series of cutting perforations or the like to cut away segments of cheese placed in a hopper.
Such prior art hand-held rotary graters are unsatisfactory in a number of respects. Most notably, while these devices work fairly well on hard cheeses such as parmesan, mizithra, etc., they are ineffective at grating soft cheeses such as mozzarella, cheddar, jack, and the like. More particularly, prior art graters tend to produce large strings of soft cheese segments during grating which quickly interfere with each other and the inner surfaces of the barrel, retarding the discharge of the cheese from the device and thereby rendering the grater ineffective. That is, while some prior art graters are capable of grating soft cheese, the cheese segments produced by such graters accumulate within the barrel rather than falling through, giving unsatisfactory results.
Furthermore, while some prior art graters allow the barrel to be removed from the housing (i.e., to facilitate cleaning), this often requires the user to unthread the handle from the unit or the barrel, which may necessitate the user manually holding the barrel stationary.
Accordingly, hand-held rotary graters are therefore needed to overcome these and other limitations of the prior art.